boner - 2009-09-12 I'm glad nobody was hurt, and they got the guy who did this the next day.

StanleyPain - 2009-09-12 On 9/10 I had a not-that-great a day and didn't sleep well that night. I got up way earlier than I normally would, stumbled out to the frontroom and flicked on the TV just in time to barely comprehend what was going on and see the second plane hit the tower live and the people jumping out the building to their deaths.

Shitty thing to see when you're barely awake.

I watched CSPAN the rest of the day. Since they're not really a "news" station proper with reporters and such and were obviously totally unprepared for something like this, for most of the day they were sending cameramen all around New York to film things without any commentary.

memedumpster - 2009-09-12 My father called me and said the United States was under attack and they took out the WTC. Scared the fuck out of me, in my mind I was imagining a nuclear strike.

These stars are for the schmucks in the second tower who sent workers back to their offices who tried to leave before the second plane hit.

Witty_Pop_Culture_Reference - 2009-09-12 My ex called me up after my dad woke me to 'America is under attack' and she said 'Holy shit did you see what happened?' and I said, 'By the end of the week they will be blaming Osama Bin Laden and invading Afghanistan, watch and see.'

Louis Armstrong - 2009-09-12 That is the wittiest pop culture reference I have ever heard.

sosage - 2009-09-12 They were blaming him within the first 15 minutes of the planes hitting the buildings.

I can't star this in either direction. It was a really devastating day that I don't enjoy revisiting.

Hooper_X - 2009-09-12 Yeah, I was in the co-op on campus and a hysterical sorority girl was all OH MY GOD WHO COULD HAVE DONE THIS and I was pretty matter-of-fact about it. "It'd take too many people for it to be a lone nut Tim McVeigh type - it was probably Osama Bin Laden or someone like that."

RockBolt - 2009-09-12 Seriously, the long and short of it is, they gained more with this act than we could have ever given with a bow on top to their cause. They serendipitously broke every single thing about this country and the mental retardation that it caused will pretty much have to die with the generations that witnessed it before things can move on, and that is so heartbreaking I can hardly think about it. They fucking got us, and we haven't stopped killing ourselves since.

Bort - 2009-09-13 I like to hope that the mental retardation that was exposed and now is taking the form of birthers and deathers and teabaggers, will eventually discredit itself much as the bomb-throwing leftist radicals of the 60s eventually did. I like to hope this, in much the same way that I like to hope for a pony.

godot - 2009-09-12 Had this attack occurred at the same hour on June 7, 2001, I would have died in the top-of-the-world restaurant. Or jumping to escape the flames.

I hearing about the second plane attack immediately out of class, and joined the discussion on my usual news forums. As a MS flight sim fan, I knew that the flying would be pretty easy, as I crashed plenty of planes into WTC (sometimes while trying to land on the top in a headwind). I posted a guess before noon that it would take 4-6 people to do the job with each plane.

futurebot - 2009-09-12 Often I think about what would have happened if one of those planes had struck on November 5, 1998, when I was at the World Trade Center.

So I'm sure you'll understand why 9/11 has special significance for me.

simon666 - 2009-09-13 I've never been to NYC, let alone WTC, so you'll understand that having to see people jump to their deaths, because throwing one's body from hundreds of feet in the air onto the street below is the most reasonable choice when faced with suffocating on noxious smoke and fumes while getting burned alive, is why 9/11 have a special significance for me too.

Keefu - 2009-09-13 I find it hard to believe I was 11 when this happened now.

mon666ster - 2009-09-13 I got out of class about 10:00 that morning, and went to the bank to negotiate my student loan. I asked the teller how she was, and she said "Well I'll never forget today". I debated as I really didn't want to hear a boring bank teller story, but then asked why not. She told me terrorists had knocked over the WTC. It didn't even register. I mean, it seemed so ludicrous, that I figured she was some kind of idiot.

That said, I watched TV for about 4 days straight after that, and I know it's been 8 years, but I don't think I've ever seen the live footage of the anchors reacting when the second plane flew in. It's as chilling as I always imagined it would be.

Hooper_X - 2010-03-31 I actually worked at the local TV station as an assistant producer. I went in probably around noon (after my university cancelled all classes for the day) and stayed until probably 11:30-12am.

They pretty much pulled everyone who normally worked in sales and marketing and all that down to the newsroom to answer phones; mostly people calling to announce that some church or another would be holding a special service (so many of these that we eventually set up our own crawl going along the bottom), along with a fair bit of paranoia and hysteria. There were bombs in the local mall. There was a bomb at the local Best Buy. Someone's grandson's cousin worked at NORAD and there were nuclear warheads missing from a stockpile. There was a car bomb in Atlanta at the Capitol. There was a plane crash at Camp David. There was a car bomb at the State Department.

At the time, we had a program where local middle-schoolers got to be "junior journalists"; they'd go out with a reporter and a photog and shoot a fluff piece on a high school's new science lab or a community theater production or whatever. One of those kids was in the studio on 9/11. I told him point blank he needed to remember this, 'cause he was going to have one hell of a story to tell his grandkids.